Newton's Insurance Renewal Meetings

          Scheduling the City's insurance renewal meetings was one of my recent tasks.  Assistant City Manager Lunda Asmani requested that I schedule insurance renewal meetings for all of the department heads for February 13th.  This included supervisors and department heads from the fire department, the police department, the library, the parks department, the streets and sanitation department, the water plant, the wastewater plant, the Kansas Logistics Park, and the Meridian Center.  Lunda wanted to meet with the insurance brokers for an hour before the rest of our entourage.
          It was a benefit that I had been here for about a month as I knew whose schedule would already be pretty full even though this meeting was over a week away.  I checked first with Suzanne Loomis, the City Engineer and Director of Public Works, as she is also the busiest person at City Hall.  Lunda had originally thought we would start the meetings at 9:00 in the morning and allow 1/2 hour for each department.  Well, Suzanne's schedule was already booked and would only be available from 3:00 to 4:30.  So that was her slot.  She arranged times for the Water & Wastewater Supervisor and for the Streets and Sanitation Supervisor.  She is solely the representative for the Kansas Logistics Park which is under construction.  I was able to schedule everyone rather compactly and assigned a time to the head librarian as she was on vacation.  This would have to be changed later as she had other time committments.  Things went rather smoothly until the Supervisor from the Airport came and I had not scheduled time for him.  The insurance brokers appeared to be quite efficient and knowledgeable. 
          There was quite an uproar when this group was selected over local agencies which had always written the insurance before.  It does seem that this will be a lot better for the city as there appeared to be holes in their prior coverage that could have been devastating to the City.  Lunda and I met the brokers at Appleby's for a lunch meeting.  Who should be at the adjacent table, but their former insurance agent!!